I don't know if I ended up siding with the academics just because I happened to end up in graduate school, or if I ended up in graduate school because I already secretly sided with the academics. In any case, I stopped believing that "theory" had the power to ruin literature for anyone, or that it was possible to compromise something you loved by studying it. Was love really such a tenuous thing? Wasn't the point of love that it made you want to learn more, to immerse yourself, to become possessed?

Today the cat has returned to a position of popularity. The sacred element is not as obvious as in Egyptian times, but there does exist quite a flourishing trade in the management of cemeteries for cats, dogs and other favourite pets. On occasions dead cats have also been discovered buried within the construction of old buildings in Europe. Stuffed, and often prepared with a rat in their mouths, they were sealed under the floorboards or in the lofts to act as ornamental scarecrows. An analogous situation occurred recently when a cat discovered small microphones hidden under the floorboards of the Netherlands Embassy in Moscow. The cat had been excited by electronic waves activating the microphones and thus revealed their presence.

Whether the information picked up by these microphones had been of any use is not known, but 4000 years ago the Egyptians considered that all knowledge was divine, and consequently all animals, from bulls to dung beetles, were considered worthy of worship to a greater or lesser degree.